The Cost Of Home Insulation

There can be few experiences more dispiriting than sitting on your living room sofa and watching your own breath hanging in the air in front of you. You want to turn on the central heating, but the thought of your next energy bill persuades you to put this off for as long as possible. Whilst you cannot do a lot about the price of your heating, there are certainly steps that you can take to reduce the amount that you use. The most basic and effective one is to proof your house against draughts; not only will this prevent cold air from coming in, it will also prevent warm air from escaping.

A good place to start is with the external doors, where the gap between door edge and frame is often wide enough to let the chilly air in and the warm air out. Even the space underneath internal doors can be problematic, as the warmth from the main living areas leaches away to the colder parts of the house.

Self-adhesive strips of compression or brush seal are the usual way to make external doors draughtproof. You can buy them from any good DIY shop. There is even a clever gadget that will insulate your letterbox. For internal doors, if you don’t want to leave an old blanket on the floor you can either buy or make the traditional sausage dog or snake.

Windows are another way for draughts to sneak into your house, forcing their way in through the gap between window and frame. Sash windows can be particularly vulnerable when it comes to letting in cold air.

Most of the draught seal that fits around doors can also fit around windows. Some, such as brush seal, are also suitable for sash windows, although there are specific products for this type of opening. If you have fixed windows, double glazing film is an inexpensive way to eliminate draughts: simply attach it to your window frames with double sided tape and tighten it by applying heat with a hairdryer. Made to measure acrylic panels can also be fitted, but they are a more expensive option.

Bare wooden floors are a popular feature of houses these days, but those which are over unheated spaces such as cellars or garages can let precious warmth escape, as can the suspended floors that you often find in older buildings. You can either get a professional in to fit insulation sheets between the floor joists, or you can insulate your floors yourself by other means.

Rugs and carpets are the obvious way of covering up gaps between floorboards, but you can also buy rolls of flexible moulding to insert into them. This moulding can also be used to fill the spaces between floor and skirting boards.

There are a range of clever products on the market, all designed to help you reduce the amount of heat emitted from your house. These include the unforgettable, inflatable chimney balloon! You can even source the materials you need to carry out your own loft insulation project. In this day and age, there really is no excuse for not making your house as snug and as draught free as it can possibly be.